Asia is, of course, a very large area,containing 60 percent of the world's population, and generalizations about sucha vast set of peoples is not easy. Sometimes the advocates of "Asianvalues" have tended to look primarily at East Asia as the region ofparticular applicability. The general thesis of a contrast between the West andAsia often concentrates on the lands to the east of Thailand, even though thereis also a more ambitious claim that the rest of Asia is rather"similar." Lee Kuan Yew, to whom we must be grateful for being such aclear expositor (and for articulating fully what is often stated vaguely inthis tangled literature), outlines "the fundamental difference betweenWestern concepts of society and government and East Asian concepts" byexplaining, "when I say East Asians, I mean Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam,as distinct from Southeast Asia, which is a mix between the Sinic and theIndian, though Indian culture itself emphasizes similar values."8
Even East Asia itself, however, isremarkably diverse, with many variations to be found not only among Japan,China, Korea, and other countries of the region, but also withineachcountry. Confucius is the standard author quoted in interpreting Asian values,but he is not the only intellectual influence in these countries (in Japan,China, and Korea for example, there are very old and very widespread Buddhisttraditions, powerful for over a millennium and a half, and there are also otherinfluences, including a considerable Christian presence). There is nohomogeneous worship of order over freedom in any of these cultures.
Furthermore, Confucius himself did notrecommend blind allegiance to the state. When Zilu asks him "how to servea prince," Confucius replies (in a statement that the censors ofauthoritarian regimes may want to ponder), "Tell him the truth even if itoffends him."9Confucius is not averse to practical caution and tact, but does notforgo the recommendation to oppose a bad government (tactfully, if necessary):"When the [good] way prevails in the state, speak boldly and act boldly.When the state has lost the way, act boldly and speak softly."10
Indeed, Confucius provides a clear pointer to the fact that the twopillars of the imagined edifice of Asian values, loyalty to family andobedience to the state, can be in severe conflict with each other. Manyadvocates of the power of "Asian values" see the role of the state asan extension of the role of the family, but as Confucius noted, there can betension between the two. The Governor of She told Confucius, [End Page 14]"Among my people, there is a man of unbending integrity: when his fatherstole a sheep, he denounced him." To this Confucius replied, "Amongmy people, men of integrity do things differently: a father covers up for hisson, a son covers up for his father--and there is integrity in what they do."11
The monolithic interpretation of Asianvalues as hostile to democracy and political rights does not bear criticalscrutiny. I should not, I suppose, be too critical of the lack of scholarshipsupporting these beliefs, since those who have made these claims are notscholars but political leaders, often official or unofficial spokesmen forauthoritarian governments. It is, however, interesting to see that while weacademics can be impractical about practical politics, practical politicianscan, in turn, be rather impractical about scholarship.
It is not hard, of course, to findauthoritarian writings within the Asian traditions. But neither is it hard tofind them in Western classics: One has only to reflect on the writings of Platoor Aquinas to see that devotion to discipline is not a special Asian taste. Todismiss the plausibility of democracy as a universal value because of thepresence of some Asian writings on discipline and order would be similar torejecting the plausibility of democracy as a natural form of government inEurope or America today on the basis of the writings of Plato or Aquinas (notto mention the substantial medieval literature in support of the Inquisitions).
Due to the experience of contemporarypolitical battles, especially in the Middle East, Islam is often portrayed asfundamentally intolerant of and hostile to individual freedom. But the presenceof diversity and variety withina tradition applies very much to Islamas well. In India, Akbar and most of the other Moghul emperors (with thenotable exception of Aurangzeb) provide good examples of both the theory andpractice of political and religious tolerance. The Turkish emperors were oftenmore tolerant than their European contemporaries. Abundant examples can also befound among rulers in Cairo and Baghdad. Indeed, in the twelfth century, thegreat Jewish scholar Maimonides had to run away from an intolerant Europe(where he was born), and from its persecution of Jews, to the security of atolerant and urbane Cairo and the patronage of Sultan Saladin.
Diversity is a feature of most cultures inthe world. Western civilization is no exception. The practice of democracy thathas won out in the modernWest is largely a result of a consensus thathas emerged since the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, andparticularly in the last century or so. To read in this a historical commitmentof the West--over the millennia-- to democracy, and then to contrast it withnon-Western traditions (treating each as monolithic) would be a great mistake.This tendency toward oversimplification can be seen not only in the writings ofsome governmental spokesmen[End Page 15]in Asia, but also in thetheories of some of the finest Western scholars themselves.
As an example from the writings of a majorscholar whose works, in many other ways, have been totally impressive, let mecite Samuel Huntington's thesis on the clash of civilizations, where theheterogeneities withineach culture get quite inadequate recognition.His study comes to the clear conclusion that "a sense of individualism anda tradition of rights and liberties" can be found in the West that are"unique among civilized societies."12Huntington also argues that "thecentral characteristics of the West, those which distinguish it from othercivilizations, antedate the modernization of the West." In his view,"The West was West long before it was modern."13It is this thesis that--I have argued--doesnot survive historical scrutiny.
For every attempt by an Asian government spokesmanto contrast alleged "Asian values" with alleged Western ones, thereis, it seems, an attempt by a Western intellectual to make a similar contrastfrom the other side. But even though every Asian pull may be matched by aWestern push, the two together do not really manage to dent democracy's claimto be a universal value.
Where the Debate Belongs
I have tried to cover a number of issuesrelated to the claim that democracy is a universal value. The value ofdemocracy includes its intrinsic importancein human life, itsinstrumentalrole in generating political incentives, and its constructivefunction in the formation of values (and in understanding the forceand feasibility of claims of needs, rights, and duties). These merits are notregional in character. Nor is the advocacy of discipline or order.Heterogeneity of values seems to characterize most, perhaps all, majorcultures. The cultural argument does not foreclose, nor indeed deeplyconstrain, the choices we can make today.
Those choices have to be made here and now,taking note of the functional roles of democracy, on which the case fordemocracy in the contemporary world depends. I have argued that this case isindeed strong and not regionally contingent. The force of the claim that democracyis a universal value lies, ultimately, in that strength. That is where thedebate
belongs. It cannot be disposed of byimagined cultural taboos or assumed civilizational predispositions imposed byour various pasts.
Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prizefor Economics, is Master of Trinity College,Cambridge, and Lamont UniversityProfessor Emeritus at Harvard University. The following essay is based on akeynote address that he delivered at a February 1999 conference in New Delhi on"Building a Worldwide Movement for Democracy," cosponsored by theNational Endowment for Democracy, the Confederation of Indian Industry, and theCentre for Policy Research (New Delhi). This essay draws on work more fullypresented in his book Development as Freedom, to be published by Alfred Knopflater this year.
Notes
1. In Aldous Huxley's novelPoint Counter Point,this was enough to give anadequate excuseto a cheating husband, who tells his wife that he must go toLondon to study democracy in ancient India in the library of the BritishMuseum, while in reality he goes to see his mistress.
2. Adam Przeworski et al.,SustainableDemocracy(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995); Robert J. Barro, Getting It Right:Markets and Choices in a Free Society(Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1996).
3. I have examined the empiricalevidence and causal connections in some detail in my bookDevelopment as Freedom, forthcoming from Knopf in 1999.
4. See my "Development:Which Way Now?"Economic Journal93 (December 1983);Resources, Values, andDevelopment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984); and my"Rationality and Social Choice," presidential address to the AmericanEconomic Association, published inAmerican Economic Reviewin March1995. See also Jean Dr'eze and Amartya Sen,Hunger and Public Action(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); Frances D'Souza, ed.,Starving in Silence:A Report on Famine and Censorship(London: Article 19 International Centreon Censorship, 1990); Human Rights Watch,Indivisible Human Rights:TheRelationship between Political and Civil Rights to Survival, Subsistence andPoverty (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992); and International Federationof Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies,World Disaster Report 1994(Geneva: Red Cross, 1994).
5. Dr'eze and Sen,Hungerand Public Action.
6. See my "Tagore and His India,"New York Review of Books,26 June 1997.
7. Amartya Sen, "HumanRights and Asian Values," Morgenthau Memorial Lecture (NewYork: Carnegie Council on Ethicsand International Affairs, 1997), published in a shortened form in The NewRepublic,14-21 July 1997.
8. Fareed Zakaria, "Culture is Destiny: A Conversation withLee Kuan Yew,"Foreign Affairs
73 (March-April 1994): 113.
9.The Analects of Confucius,Simon Leys, trans. (New York: Norton, 1997), 14.22, 70.
10.The Analects of Confucius,14.3, 66.
11.The Analects of Confucius,13.18, 63.
12. Samuel P. Huntington,The Clash of Civilizations andthe Remaking of World Order(NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 71.
13. Huntington,The Clashof Civilizations,69.
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